Under the Influenz

What doesn't kill you makes you... wish it would?

It's been  a long time - much longer than I ever promised myself I'd allow to pass between blog posts. It's also been a very trying couple of weeks but the result has been that I now realise I've probably never had the 'flu' in my life before.  It is not a cold, it is not a nice couple of days tucked up in bed, it is not a joke.

In  late 1918 New Zealand lost almost half as many people to influenza in two months as it had in the entire first World War.  The name comes the Italian word for 'influence', meaning that their astrologers believed this most unpleasant of viral blights was a direct result of some malign cosmological affect.

I'd best not dwell on having to miss a school friend's long looked forward to 50th birthday celebration, or a running event I'd trained for months for (perfect weather on the day, incidentally). And I certainly won't linger on the fact that I undoubtedly gave it to my lovely wife who only now is beginning to eat again and return to work.

Good things have happened too, not the least of them being finally recovering, but also successfully test-piloting a night shift from home (the result of months of careful diplomacy and fumblingly cobbling together an entirely different way of working which can still satisfy a barrage of impatient deadlines).

An exciting writing opportunity may be about to coalesce (or not) and a chance to sponsor (in a tiny way) an independent creator whose podcasts have given me much joy over the past few years has left me feeling unaccountably happy, particularly as the general response to his invitation to help has been extremely encouraging.

Despite feeling like a very worn insole bearing the weight of someone sweatily enjoying life a hell of a lot more than me, I managed to do a little creating as well.

I don't tweet and probably never will, but this illustration (knocked up in record time between coughing fits) accompanies a story about the potential mass destructiveness of twitter, when a predatory tweeting flock can round on a target and become a stinging swarm of social media wasps.  Ostracisation, job loss and worse can ensue.

Woefully un-Rugby minded, I now possibly understand more than most after having been given the apparent privilege of creating a Rugby World Cup wall chart.  Dates, times, stadium names, national flags and daylight saving adjustments in two hemispheres were scrupulously fretted over and constantly altered.  Most papers and on-line ran it throughout the country last weekend, so I guess that means it was worthwhile.

In an alternative universe, Hammer is packing out the multiplexes,
while Marvel is still making Saturday morning cartoon series for television

More personally fulfilling was this little number.  Having been invited to join a Facebook Hammer discussion Group, I fast-tracked this dubiously photoshopped pastiche to share. In some cases, these figures are composed of elements from over a dozen different pitifully-low resolution sources, and it certainly looks like it.  (Brian Donlevy's Quatermass wasn't even represented in colour anywhere!)  But hopefully it is as much fun for a Hammer fan to look at as it was for me to put together. (38 'likes' seems to indicate this might be the case).

Spot the difference

With the return of my appetite comes the return for a taste for life as well.  Good health, everyone!